Staffing software (temporary staffing software and long-term staffing software) can help staffing agencies find and manage recruits as well as corporate clients. More specifically, it can facilitate communication with clients and recruits, managing recruit profiles, and posting jobs. Also, staffing software helps perform tasks related to matching recruits to job openings, including candidate screening, applicant tracking, and more.

Sometimes, staffing software is referred to as applicant tracking software or recruiting software. But applicant tracking software and recruiting software may also be used by enterprises for their own recruiting needs while staffing software handles the demands of a staffing agency.

Staffing agencies software key capabilities

Staffing software can integrate with email services and calendars, job boards, social media, a staffing agency’s website, and more, which helps increase the efficiency of staffing processes. As regards built-in capabilities of staffing software, we can distinguish the following components:

Applicant tracking system (ATS)

An applicant tracking system is a key component of staffing software. The ATS offers candidate sourcing, resume management, applicant evaluation, and candidate tracking.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Staffing CRM functionality is required for the effective management of an agency’s relationships with clients and candidates. It helps reduce time to hire, add and view candidate data easily, track opportunities, generate detailed real-time reports, and more.

Throughout the food manufacturing process, from purchasing raw materials to distributing end products, manufacturing companies rely on different types of software to facilitate their business-critical operations. An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution is one of the key elements of a manufacturing software ecosystem. It helps plan raw material procurement and utilization, monitor inventory levels across various stages, automate customer order processing, and track finished food items through the entire supply chain.

The key functionality of food manufacturing software

All ERPs for food manufacturers is unique and may provide different functionality depending on the manufacturer’s size, the production process specifics, the existing digital environment, and more. customers from the food domain are typically interested in the following food manufacturing software features:

• Planning of food production and distribution. To analyze sales history, get analytics-based recommendations on the optimal time for raw material purchasing, manage order grouping for bulk processing, and plan product shipping.
• Bill of Materials (BOM) creation and management. To centralize information on the amount and cost of raw materials required to manufacture a particular SKU, create and edit product manufacturing and packaging instructions.
• Inventory management. To track the number of raw materials and finished goods, timely reallocate inventory between multiple , storage, and distribution sites, identify slow sellers and popular products, and predict high and low sales periods to avoid overstocking and stockouts.
• Supply chain management. To monitor the transfer of raw materials and end products between manufacturing facilities, storage locations, and distribution centers.
• Recipe management. To facilitate the creation and storage of food and beverage recipes, record information on ingredients and their substitutions.
• Quality management. To establish quality control checklists and procedures, monitor the quality of raw materials and end products to ensure food safety and quality, and maintain compliance with relevant governmental regulations.
• Cost management. To accurately value inventory based on a preferred costing method, track the spending on raw materials, consumables, etc.

Make the first step in your future food software

Food manufacturing and distribution software can facilitate planning, optimize inventory management and supply chain operations, and help guarantee the compliance of food products with the required industry- and country-specific regulations. If you consider implementing effective food software to improve the transparency and overall effectiveness of your food and distribution processes.

The software selection process can be complicated and overwhelming, and it often leads to analysis paralysis and organizational conflict, among other things. Navigating that terrain often requires external, objective help to help guide the process and ensure an organization is focusing on the right things as they vet each system.  

It all comes down to gathering the right requirements, enabling project management, and other digital transformation best practices that you can find in our most recent digital transformation report.  

Whether you do it yourself or decide to bring in a third-party consultant, these 10 proven tactics can guard your company against risks and pitfalls that come with the software selection process. Follow these vetting tactics when going through software evaluations. Although it may take a little longer, these simple due diligence asks will save money and heartburn in the long run. 

10 Tips for Vetting Software Vendors Through the ERP Software Selection Process 

1. Measure twice, cut once. 

• Allow your team the time to do real due diligence upfront.  Red flags are ignore many times when the company is hurtling toward a fast decision.  A proper selection process can take anywhere from 6-to 18 months depending on the size and scope.  Allow them time and resources. 

2. Get references. 

• Ask to speak to references who are on the same version you are planning to deploy and if it’s on-prem or cloud.  Preferably in your industry, size, and with some of the same nuances or challenges you are solving for. 

3. Probe beyond the surface. 

• Ask them to further demonstrate areas where they say “yes, we can do that” This may require mini demonstrations of said functionality and the vendor should be willing and able to accommodate. 

4. What you see is not always what you get. 

• Ask if that functionality they are selling or showcasing is “out of the box” or requires customization.  In addition, ask for details about the time and cost tied to building out the customizations.  As well as any recurring fees to maintain the integrations that are built to accommodate those customizations. 

5. Remember that vendors are selling.  

• There may be claims made in the sales process that simply can’t be fulfill by the professional services team. There have been many companies who have fallen subject to the professional services team being blind-side by a request, and they can only say that that functionality was not include or that it is the customer’s responsibility. Assume positive intent with your sales representative, but verify everything. Once you sign the contract, there’s no going back.  

6. Understand the product road map. 

• Ask to have someone walk you through their product roadmap.  Understand if what they are selling/showing is what will be deployed on your go-live date.  Vendors will have their demo environments, websites, and web videos set up to show all the bells and whistles functioning at a high level.  Again, they are selling.  Remember that most ERP software does not come out of the box looking/operating like that.  Dig deep into their product roadmap and the stability of the product over the next several years.

7. Do your due diligence. 

• Check the forums and real user feedback about how good their technical support and service teams are.  SLAs, response times on service tickets, etc.  There are many resources out there. Consider looking at places like Gartner and Software Advice. 

8. Adding on too early in the process. 

• Be wary of doing customizations or buying additional modules too early in the process.  Learn what is core functionality first and work with the system for a while before spending more time or money on additional bells and whistles you may not need right now. The 20% contingency budget built into these projects should not be spent on things that could have accounted for ahead of time.  

9. Request sales back-up. 

• Ask the vendor to include a solution architect and professional services/delivery team resource in the demonstration if possible.  This will keep the sales team honest in terms of what they are promising general cost, time, and complexity estimates.

10. NEGOTIATE!  

• There is almost always room to negotiate on price.  There are a couple of vendors who are notorious for not negotiating, which I will not name here.    
• Know when fiscal year-end is for your vendors, and try to time negotiations/close around that time when they are most incentivized to offer discounts.   

• Oracle:  May 31.  Microsoft:  June 30.  Infor: April 30.  
• The end of the quarter can also be a good time for that as well.   

• A few other ways we’ve seen customers reduce spending include caps on maintenance fee increases, extended maintenance and support time, future options on additional software purchases, and reduced hourly rates on professional services.